A quick head shot set up

I went to Scott Kelby's Lightroom 2 Live Tour this week in Los Angeles. As always Scott did a great job covering the material and bringing everyone up to date on how to use the software, but it was something he said about a lighting setup towards the end of the seminar that peeked my interest. As an example for an ad for a beauty product he brought up an image of a model that he had shot previously. It was a simple head shot against what I had originally thought was a white seamless paper roll. But instead he had shot the model in front of another light. I have done the same thing in the past, but instead of shooting with the light directly pointing at the back of the model and towards the camera, he pointed the back light upwards at a 45˚ angle. This had the pleasing effect of wrapping the light around the models cheeks, neck and shoulders. I really liked the look and was anxious to try it myself.

As luck would have it my friend Vicki had asked me to create some head shots of a friend of hers who had agreed to model for us both. Melanie was great and was very patience with me even though she had not model much before. I used the technique to create the near by image of her and I was pleased with the results. This setup is another tool in the bag that I can go to for a quick clean head shot of a model.